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Bidenflation Punishes Family Businesses

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By Tada Images @ Adobe Stock

You know how hard it has been to keep the family business running through years of Bidenflation. Costs are up and it’s difficult to feed prices through to customers. You don’t want to charge them more, and they don’t want to pay more, but Bidenflation intrudes on the business/consumer relationship, forcing everyone to do things they don’t want to do. That’s why the last three years have been so difficult for small mom-and-pop shops. In The Washington Examiner, Salena Zito explains just how difficult it’s been, writing:

MURRYSVILLE, Pennsylvania — Seventy years after the Ferri family moved its grocery store from Turtle Creek to this Westmoreland County town, the family is calling it quits. The pressures of inflation and the unexpected closing of the Mainline Pharmacy, the independent pharmaceutical located inside their iconic structure, were the final two straws.

The beloved family grocery posted a note on Facebook announcing the end-of-May closing “with a heavy heart” after serving as “a corner stone of our community and … fostering connections that have spanned generations.”

In February, Mainline Pharmacy, a small independent local pharmacy with 11 locations in small towns across western Pennsylvania, had abruptly closed up shop. The cheery red, white, and blue pharmacies dotted small towns such as Harrison City and Level Green, with most of its employees clocking in for 20-plus years. The pharmacy owners said the plummeting rates of payment from pharmacy benefit managers, PBM’s, too often reimburse pharmacies demonstratively less than the cost of medications.

A PBM is a third-party entity that serves as a middleman between insurance providers and the manufacturers who make the drugs.

A post on Mainline’s Facebook page said the pharmacy said it lost more than $350,000 on 17,500 prescriptions filled since January because of the low reimbursements saying it made staying in business unsustainable.

Ferri’s general manager, Gary Silvestri, said that loss of rent and traffic from the pharmacy had a significant impact, as it was 20% of their business. That, along with the relentlessness of the current inflationary costs on food for both the store and the customers, “made staying in business untenable,” he said.

Action Line: To fight inflation, you need to save til it hurts. You should also build an investment plan that takes inflation into account. If you want help, I’m here. In the meantime, click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.

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